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Filthy bastard. Sleazebag. Sinner. Let’s drop the put-downs, it’s not nice and it’s not okay to make anyone feel ashamed for watching porn. Hardcore porn watching is like anything else that’s hardcore, it has stigma attached to it and that shouldn’t fly. Skaters know the feeling, so too do heavy metal fans and emotional people who have been abbreviated into emos.

Now it’s the turn of avid porn watchers to feel the heat of a society that is struggling to accept that male sexuality is buffering and changing with the times. This is the age of the internet and therefore, men and boys with computers will be engaging sexual material via the screen on the machine.

Take a moment to swallow and accept. It’s not for you to judge and it’s not for you to make John feel like a dirty creep merely for answering the loud messages his body sends him. Seriously, masturbation is a biological imperative for most guys and porn is sitting there screaming “I’m better than what you can imagine!”

Case in point, when I was a youngster at Brooklyn Primary, I was badass enough to be spending my lunchtime inside; I resented being made to wear a hat and subsequently refused. A fellow cap-shunning delinquent confided in me just what he had seen with his friend the day before…on the internet.

As I listened to his tale, no detail spared, I could scarcely believe my ears. Needless to say, I took a liberty and skipped an entire episode of Dragon Ball Z that afternoon. That was me and that was so many young bucks. We were exploring and investigating by our own initiative or at the urgent prompting of a friend. If we are to be ashamed for having taken the matter into our own hands then curse the society that imposes that tax. Every guy has a right to answer the curiosity he’s endowed with.

Porn’s no clean prince though. Women are objectified by it. The argument that men are too falls flat in light of how few women actually watch it regularly if ever. Also, guys get it into their head that what they are watching might be worth a crack later with girlfriend Sally. It’s not. She’s your girlfriend. You sort of respect her remember? DC, a female student at Massey University, eased the confusion.

“Porn is so fake and guy orientated, it’s just not nice. I don’t want to be the girl in those movies.” Rain-check on the steamy massage turn threesome, fellas. What’s more, porn is a little like that pill that had you bouncing off the walls on Tuesday night—you don’t really know what you’re getting. Girls could be trafficked, underage or both. You may genuinely be watching a sex slave. Yeah, porn’s not perfect.

The thing is, as easily as porn snuck up on society, it’s not going anywhere. It won’t be chased back into the shadows from whence it came, and shaming people for watching it serves no purpose at all. The devil isn’t in porn itself, it’s in us. Don’t hate a porn watcher, hate a porn watcher that reduces his respect for women after having watched it far too much and taken it far too seriously. Likewise, don’t dog on the guy that recognizes it as a fantasy and nothing more, it’s the guy that attempts the unthinkable manoeuvres later that night that deserves a serious dressing down. If people commit to watching porn without the carry-on, well that’s dandy. That is healthy. That is fine. ▲

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The student magazine of Victoria University of Wellington. Salient is available on campus free each Monday during term. Funded in part by Victoria University of Wellington students, through the Student Services Levy.